Questions
by 123me
Summary: She'd spent hours thinking through what she'd recently found out, considered her own response to the revelations, and now she wondered if perhaps she had been too pushy, too insistent on her daughter telling her exactly what happened. ONESHOT


**Set a few days after the events of 'UnmAsked'**

**Kind of different to most other things I write, and I'm not sure I like it, but here it is...**

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She spent her life defending people. Those that she felt were innocent, and those that she knew were guilty. Regardless of her feelings, she did her job, and to the best of her ability. She'd learnt how to deal with both the accused and the accusers, learnt how to be unaffected by the feelings of the victims in order to provide the best defense possible for her clients. Work was easy, as long as she didn't see things in black and white, but seeing things in shades of gray became difficult when the victim was her daughter.

She'd spent the past few days feeling how the family of a victim would feel. The anger, the worry, the need for some kind of justice. Her knowledge of the law told her that there wasn't much chance of that. Her child's tormenter was ill, and that would play a huge part in the response of the legal system. She'd be locked up, medicated, she'd get all the help she needed, but how did that help them? How did that help her daughter?

She'd spent hours thinking through what she'd recently found out, considered her own response to the revelations, her husband had backed off after sensing their daughter's reluctance to open up, he never had been good with things that even had the slightest chance of resulting in tears, but she hadn't, and now she wondered if perhaps she had been too pushy, too insistent on her daughter telling her exactly what happened, too much like a lawyer in those first few hours. She'd tried to overlook the maternal instincts, her sudden need to hide her daughter from the world, to protect her from a danger that had already passed. It turned out that it wasn't the lawyer's questions that caused her daughter to shut down, but the mothering that followed. The very behaviour that she knew that her child probably wasn't used to being the subject of.

The teenager was strong, probably stronger than she should ever have needed to be, but as strong as she had to be. She had a way of dealing with somewhat horrific things that helped her move past them pretty rapidly, and she'd definitely had a lot she needed to move past, she'd been through more in sixteen years than most people went through in a lifetime, and Veronica didn't know whether to be concerned or inspired by it.

"Mom?" It took her a while to realise the sixteen year old and noticed her gaze, and was now matching it. "Don't you have to get to work?"

For a moment she considered it, she was a workaholic, and she'd never once took time off, not for herself or others, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she needed to be with her daughter, that despite the resistance of the subject of her attention, she couldn't leave. She stood, moving towards where her daughter was sitting. "How's your wrist?"

Spencer looked up at her curiously. "Okay..." She hesitated. "Did I do something to imply it wasn't?"

"No." Veronica responded, sitting next to her. "But you don't always tell me things."

"I'm sorry!" Spencer exclaimed, having lost count of the amount of times she'd said it over the past few days. "It's not as if I had much of a choice." She looked away, as if averting her eyes was an act of defiance that would put off even her mother. "Why do you keep putting this on me? I didn't do anything! Hanna, Aria and Emily didn't say anything either."

"They are not my daughters." Veronica pointed out. She sighed, knowing that her frustration at the situation wasn't as important as trying to understand her daughter's thoughts. "I understand why you didn't tell me, honey, but you were in trouble, and if you're in trouble I want you to tell me." She paused. "She could have hurt you, Spencer, it's serious."

"She didn't!" Spencer stood up, heading towards the stairs. "And I am aware of that."

"I need to be sure." She pointed out. "There's nothing that you haven't told me? You didn't miss anything out?"

"No!" She watched as her daughter defended her prior words.

"I spoke to Ashley last night, Spencer. She seems to think you're all hiding something."

She stopped at the foot of the stairs. "You spoke to Hanna's mom?"

"The four of us had a lot to discuss."

"The four of you!"

"What did you expect, Spencer? That we'd just let it go?" She remained focused on her, hoping that she'd decide to open up, but her daughter didn't respond. "I know it probably doesn't always seem like it, but I do care, and when I know that you're hiding things from me, I worry."

"I'm not hiding anything."

"I want to believe that, honey, but there's too many questions. Your father thinks so too."

"Like what?"

"Was it Mona that ran Hanna down?"

"I don't know, mom. None of us saw the driver." She frowned. "We've already been over all of this."

"We're going to keep going over it until I'm sure you've told me everything."

"I have!" Spencer turned away again, continuing in the direction she had previously been going. "I'll be in my room, okay?"

**-Q-**

**S**pencer Hastings was irritated. She'd known that night that if she got out of that situation alive, everything would come out, that her parents would have questions, that she'd probably get the third degree about not telling them, but they were HER parents. Usually they would have dropped it by now, the repeated questioning about the same events was usually reserved for their clients, it was something she'd only experienced from the police due to Alison's disappearance.

Something had changed in the Hastings house. She hadn't been left alone since her parents had demanded she return, following a call from the police advising them of what had been happening to her, not even long enough to question Melissa about her presence at Emily's house or Garrett. It was like her parents, who she had grown used to seeing less and less of, had become helicopter parents overnight, and she wasn't sure whether to blame Mona for starting this whole chain of events, or herself for not ensuring that her parents didn't find out about it.

She wasn't used to having so much attention, and she wasn't even sure she liked it. Her dad's constant use of his nickname for her, 'champ', was beginning to sound even stranger than it did when he rarely used it, and her mother's interrogations were really starting to annoy her, more so than the calls from journalists wanting to speak to her about her 'ordeal'. She'd refused to speak to them, and as far as she knew, so had her friends, not that she'd know, the constant hounding from her family had prevented her from having any proper conversations with them.

She'd admit that she'd been acting like a bit of a brat in an attempt to encourage her parents to leave her alone, but the more she pushed, the harder they pushed back.

She groaned when the door opened, turning to face her mother.

"Mom..."

"I understand." Veronica stated, coming to sit by her. "And I'm sorry if I seemed angry a few minutes ago, but just because you're okay with everything." She paused. "That doesn't mean I am."

She shot her a look of confusion, waiting for her to continue.

"I should have noticed something was off with you, and I didn't." Veronica began. "I'm sorry for that."

"I didn't want you to know."

"I still should have." Her mother argued. "If I'd been paying more attention or..."

"It's not your fault."

"It is my fault that you didn't come to me, and that's not okay."

"Mom..."

"The police told me, honey. They told me what she did to you that night. She hurt you, and I know you won't admit this, but I know she wanted to do more than hurt you. If she did anything that you haven't told me, you have to tell me, I need to know if you're holding anything back."

"I'm not." Spencer responded, hoping she was successful at hiding the lie. She and her friends and decided to leave some important aspects out before speaking to the police, and she wasn't about to go back on that now. "You know everything."

"Are you sure?"

Spencer nodded. "I honestly just want to stop thinking about it. I'm meant to be thinking about summer classes and college, right now, and now that she's gone, I feel like I can. It doesn't help to keep going over it."

Veronica sighed. "I'm not promising to drop it completely, but for a little while, okay."

She smiled, nodding quickly. "Mom, when you spoke to Emily's mom earlier, did you..."

"Ask how she was doing?" Veronica finished. "Yes. She's not doing so good, honey. She's not talking to anyone right now, I think she just needs to find a way to come to terms with Maya not being here."

"It was definitely Maya?"

"It looks that way." Veronica hesitated. "Are you okay with it?"

"Better than Emily." She frowned. "I just feel so guilty, because I keep thinking 'what if it was Toby?' and then I feel so relieved that it wasn't, but then I remember that Em is going through hell right now."

"It's natural to feel that way." Veronica responded. "I think he feels a little like that, too. He keeps calling, I wasn't sure if you'd want to speak to him."

"I do." Spencer insisted. "I just, don't really know how. There's so much I haven't told him, and..."

"Just tell him the truth, he'll understand."

Spencer watched as her mother left the room, pondering her words before picking up her phone.

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**Review?**


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